Amaris Lara recently restored and rebuilt a 1967 Schwinn bicycle.
Amaris Lara and other kids her age love building cool things with LEGO sets. What sets Lara apart is that she also loves to build full-size bicycles for fun.
The eight-year-old tinkerer recently completed her first project, repurposing a 1967 Schwinn cruiser into an eye-catching “low rider” that turns heads wherever it goes. It even won Lara a trophy nearly as tall as she is at a custom car and bike show in Plant City.
“I went to a Miami car show and all the bikes seemed pretty cool,” Lara said. “I felt like I wanted to do one. I used to make some little drawings about this bike.”
She filled up notepads with drawings of her dream bike and started to turn them into reality in May. Her parents found the 1967 Schwinn frame on eBay and had it shipped to Plant City from Chicago, and they also purchased a “donor bike” just to harvest other parts from. Her father, JP Lara, said she completed about 80% of the project by herself and got help from him, her uncle Rob Trejo and Rene Carranza of Firme Hydro Werkz.
She painted the frame at Trejo’s house, did the leafing and designs with Carranza at Firme Hydro Werkz and completed the rest of the build at home in the family’s car port.
Because of the low suspension, which has both the front fender and the pedals mere inches from scraping the ground, it’s not really what one would call a “daily rider.” But what it lacks in rideability, it more than makes up for in style points. Lara’s bicycle, nicknamed the “Itty-Bitty,” hits all the notes of classic low rider bicycles with a sparkly pink paint job (which she did herself) that pops in the sunlight and metallic purple accents everywhere from the wheels’ spokes to the headlight mount. The bike sits extremely low to the ground and has a shock to mimic the up-and-down movement of the hydraulic-powered cars and ape hanger handlebars.
With one build down, Lara doesn’t plan on stopping. She’s already planning another build with a bright teal paint job and hopes to get started soon.
